Entrenched
by KTrevo
Summary: He fights like a man possessed, hands slick with German blood, Canadian sweat and French rain. /Or, Matthew's stuck in someone else's war and can't for the life of him get away from all the death.


**Back. Finally. In a new fandom. At any rate, here. Have a Canada fic, because there's a sad lack of Canada-centric stories in general, I've noticed.**

**This was originally done as a short story for my English class, and I was really proud of it, so I decided to make it Hetalia and BAM here you are.**

* * *

This storm's supposed to give them an advantage, but he doesn't see it. Somehow, being cold and miserable and having to squint against the driving sleet in the darkness of Easter Monday morning isn't really looking like a spectacular start to an operation that's already been postponed by a day.

He's honestly starting to wonder whether or not he should have just hidden out in the woods back home until this blasted war is over. Then he remembers that he'd never do that, ever. Not if his people are over here fighting in someone else's bloody war.

Beside him, Robert Lévesque is whistling quietly, alternating between clenching his hands around his gun and blowing warm air into them, rubbing them briskly. Lévesque glances at him, pausing his rendition of "Tipperary" to shoot him a shaky, snow-stained grin.

"_Prèt, Mathieu?_" he wants to know, in his Québecois accent. "Going to be an 'ell of a time."

Matthew nods, and offers a small smile in return, muttering a quick, "Absolutely," before trying to catch a glimpse of the time on his watch in the wavering flares of the artillery barrage that's been shaking the trenches for the last week or so. Long enough that he barely notices the blasts anymore.

Lévesque's started whistling again.

Contented that it's not yet time for the attack, Matt looks at the men around him, all huddled bodies and wool uniforms and mud and lice and green rectangles on their arms. Some of them are smoking, others making jokes about how badly the Germans are going to be wiped out when put up against the full force of every single artillery shell at the disposal of the Canadian Corps when all they've got are shredded trenches and piddly little whiz-bangs and potato mashers. Still more are gnawing on unlit cigarettes and trying to not to look too terrified.

A few men away, the company's radio crackles. Through the white noise, the Lieutenant-General's voice crunches through, bearing what are probably meant to be motivating words, but which don't quite serve to console many that are trying to deal with the fact that they'll probably never see their families back home again, like the bits of men strewn across the battlefield.

"_Chaps,_" the crackle says, "_You shall go over exactly like a railroad train, on time, or you shall be overwhelmed._"

Right, Matthew thinks. No pressure.

* * *

At precisely 5:30am on Easter Monday, 1917, the ground begins to shake with much more vigor than before. Land mines are detonated and then they're over the top of the trenches, praying that nothing German will get through the cover of the creeping barrage—

Except that one of the officers wants to save a piece of German trench and leaves them open to payback for the last week of suffering.

It makes him wonder why he enlisted as a private.

Four men to Matt's right are shot dead almost immediately, but he tries not to think too much on them, choosing instead to rummage through the pockets and glean all the ammunition he can from them. He pushes the fear and the pain and the death to the back of his mind and they push on, trying desperately to advance through the hail of lead raining down on them from the Pimple, just high enough above them to give the enemy the advantage.

They're there for hours, it seems.

Somehow, when word gets out that the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions have reached their first objective, Matt's watch says that it's just after half-past six.

Sometime after that, he stops checking his watch.

* * *

Lévesque is whistling again.

They're pressed against the wall of their trench, having only advanced a dozen metres in the last few hours- if they're lucky.

They aren't lucky. Lady Fortune has yet to be kind today.

Somehow, he's still alive. Torn, bloody, muddy, exhausted, yes, but alive all the same— not that that in itself is surprising, but he's not been terribly injured, which is. More or less. In his less terrifying moments of rest, he helps patch up his fellow soldiers with his very basic first aid knowledge picked up from his nurse of a younger half-sister back home, but it's slow going. The only thing possibly helping with the leaking ruby red is the cold. It makes the blood laggard and reluctant to leave the body and soak the not-so-clean bandages.

It could almost be construed as good, this cold. It slows the death.

The barrage is too far ahead to offer much cover from either the elements or the German defense on both the Pimple and Hill 145, their objective. Even with the gauze they carry in their uniforms, they're being wounded and killed almost too fast for them to run out of ammunition.

More men have joined Lévesque in his whistling, several of them wounded. Matt wants to thank them for trying to raise morale, but he can't really speak for the sheer terror choking him by proxy, so he whistles instead, barely able to hear anything with the explosions still shattering the air and the ground.

Then finally— _finally— _the reserve troops are there, with fresh men and rifle rounds and bandages and provisions. Matthew helps drag the wounded men back from the front line and does his best to ignore the ones they don't have time to move; they can't be saved, and there'll be time for that later.

* * *

Dusk falls, and the German troops withdraw. The more seasoned soldiers assume it's because they've finally run out of ammo. Matt thinks it's because they think they've got them beat.

They aren't beat. Just a little behind schedule. He figures that as long as there are still men who'll charge machine gun nests single-handedly, they won't lose this ridge. Not if he has anything to say about it— nobody here is going to die in vain.

What little light the clouds let through is gone, and he clenches his eye shut and curls up around his rifle to keep it dry and tries to get a few hours of what's become a sad excuse for sleep.

* * *

He jolts awake a few hours later, ear ringing from the sharp whistle Lévesque woke him with. The man's giving him a lopsided grin, holding out the hard, crusty bread that they've become so used to in these trenches, and a metal canteen. He says something, but Matt can't hear him over the explosions, so he accepts the food and water, raises the canteen toward Lévesque in thanks and gulps the stuff down. The bread's dry, and the water's a bit gritty, but now at least he's got something in his stomach.

The sky's about as bright as he expected, which is similar to a dusty oil lamp, still clouded over and smacking them in the face with precipitation, and he glances at his watch, the face spattered with mud and blood, then at the sky again, squinting against the rain, helmet dripping, shaggy hair plastered to his cheeks.

He's been over here too long. A haircut is long overdue.

He's kind of expecting the order for them to return to the front lines, so he's not as surprised as some when they're told that the reserve unit nearly took the northern part of the Hill, failed, and now it's the 87th's turn. They're to surround the Hill, attacking the German flanks. They'll be continuously reinforced, which means there's less of a chance of being beaten down again. Eventually, the Germans will run out of ammunition, men, or both, and have to surrender.

Personally, Matt's hoping for the ammunition bit.

* * *

They charge Hill 145 at about 4:00pm on April 10th, 1917. Matthew can't help but think that they're phenomenal, the 4th Division lads. Some of them are charging machine guns with nothing but themselves and their rifle, and they just keep coming up the damn Hill. He spots a man with blood tracing its way down his face in three places, as well as on his arm, and he grips his leather ID tags and prays that if he's to die today, he does so in so honourable a way so that's he's not ashamed of himself when he wakes.

They don't stop, even when they run out of bullets. That's when the three-foot-long bayonets come out, adding more weight to their guns.

Matt's vision is cloudy, tinted pink at the edges, and the blood is a vivid splash of scarlet as he fights hard enough that he should be scaring himself, but he can't feel any of the fear he's been living with for the last few years. He's just proud to be a part of such a fantastic battalion and fights like a man possessed, hands slick with German blood, Canadian sweat and French rain. Dimly, detachedly, he realizes that his gun is probably clogged with the stuff, but then there's a German uniform and he can't think anymore, can't speak, just fights and kills and tries not to get skewered because the enemy's out of ammo as well and being run through with a bayonet must be a terrible way to die.

It hurts like hell, he finds out a few moments later.

A searing strip of cold, slick metal punches its way through his back, just under his right shoulder blade. Mud splashes as he stumbles to his knees, gasping for air that doesn't seem to want to stay in his lungs.

He coughs, a choking wheeze of a sound, and he can't for the life of him figure out what's going on. Why's his body so sluggish? He shouldn't be this cold. He should be up on his feet, fighting his way to the summit. What's he doing on the ground?

Ridiculously, he starts hearing a whistled rendition of "Tipperary," even if he knows that there's no way possible he'd be able to hear it over the deafening sounds of dying.

He wheezes out the words, voice barely more than a breath, and he suddenly realizes he's bleeding out.

The victory cheer of the 4th Canadian Division blows past him, unnoticed.

* * *

**So, yeah. Obviously, I don't own Mattie, or the Battle of Vimy Ridge, or Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng, who actually said that bit on the radio.**

**Now for history:**

**-The Battle of Vimy Ridge was part of the larger Battle of Arras, basically, which was pretty much this big movement on the Western Front in France during the First World War.**

**-Marks the first time the Canadian Corps fought together, which was four divisions up against the three divisions of the German Sixth Army.**

**-Lasted three days, from start to finish: April 9****th**** to 12****th****, 1917.**

**-Was originally supposed to begin at 5:30am on April 8****th****, but was postponed due to the weather and the wishes of the French.**

**-Is generally considered a pretty big turning point in the becoming-a-nation bit of Canada. Brigadier-General A.E. Ross went so far as to say, after the war, "In those few minutes, I witness the birth of a nation."**

**Anyway, that's just a quick rundown of the stuff to help out with any non-history-nerds get a teeny bit more out of the story, I guess. Review, maybe? Let me know if it's half-decent?**


End file.
